Adultery - Paolo Coelho

Title: Adultery
Author: Paolo Coelho
Publisher: Knopf
*This book has also been reviewed by me on Goodreads*
ONE STAR - AND THAT'S PUSHING IT

I was wondering for the longest time whether or not to review this book on my blog. When I first thought of making my own blog, I wanted to only comment on the books that I've liked, but I felt like I needed to tell you something about this specific waste of paper and ink, because if you buy it, it would be like throwing money into the wind.
I don't know how popular Coelho is in your country, but he is big in Bulgaria. During the summer of 2014 (when the book was published) I was still working at a bookstore. We received about a hundred e-mails and customer questions per day about the expected publishing date. I was wondering why to be honest, because the only other book of Coelho I've read is The Alchemist and I wasn't all that impressed with it.
Anyway, comes August 8th (the Bulgarian publishing date) and I go to work, finding a line of people going outside of the bookstore. I hurried inside and I saw piles and piles of copies of the book. I had never before seen so many copies of the same title in front of me. I was working at the register that day and sold over 60 copies (which for a small bookstore in Bulgaria is a lot) for less than six hours. At the end of my shift I took a copy home with me. I had to know what all the rage was about and also I had to know what I was selling.
The book began quite nice to be honest; romantic, even. This lasted for all of twenty pages and then it all went spiraling down so fast I got dizzy. My brow was furrowed in confusion over the absolute absurdity of this book. I couldn't for the life of me understand why someone would want to read this.
I thoroughly read more than half of the book, but I just couldn't harm my intelligence anymore, so I skimmed the rest. I was thinking about casting it aside for good, but I felt like I needed to be objective in my hatred.
The following day I brought the copy back to the bookstore and my manager asked me what I thought of it. All I did was look at her and she burst out laughing, telling me she was glad I was the one who picked it up to read, because otherwise she would have had to. (We had a policy to read all the new books that came to the bookstore, so that we can give an informative opinion. We separated the books among ourselves and then shared our opinion with the rest of the staff.)
I could honestly just sit here and tell you the plot using less words than I would to write my review. The writing style was atrocious and the vocabulary was below bar. The same word appeared on the same page seven times. No control of the language whatsoever.
If you see the review I wrote of this book on Goodreads, it is actually one simple sentence that states "If you have negative IQ, this is the book for you."
Disappointing to say the least.

Links:
Adultery on Amazon.com
Adultery on Goodreads
Paolo Coelho on Goodreads
The Alchemist on Amazon.com
The Alchemist on Goodreads

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Break Her - B.G. Harlen

Title: Break Her
Author: B.G. Harlen
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
*This review is also available on Goodreads*
FIVE STARS - ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE!

I have had Break Her on my to-read shelf for quite some time before I decided to give it a try. To be fair when I started reading it I had no expectations. I had just finished reading Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of a Popular Mind and all I knew was that I was in a mood of a sociologically related novel that showed a woman's strength. (Nothing to do with Le Bon's book, my mind was just set on the book being sociological.) Little did I know I'd find one of my favorite books.

I think this book is perhaps the only piece of literature I've ever read that made me completely lose myself in the plot. I forgot to drink water and eat and spent the entire day in bed, reading. Every sentence was more addicting than the previous one and I, like a junkie, needed by next fix in the form of chapter, right at that very moment. 

I think the way B.G. Harlen waved her way around the story and thus created a web that totally engulfed the reader within it's grab, deserves an award and I never say things like that like a throwaway.

Break Her is filled with so much meaning. It's sad that some people (from what I have read of other reviews) can't understand it. I think we live in a day and age where topics brought up in this book are taboo to the point where people are afraid to even read about them and then express what they felt after they have.

No names, no personality, limited background. Break Her gives the reader the opportunity to feel things I have not thought were possible. This story is about a man, who thinks that the worst thing he could do to a woman is to rape, abuse and humiliate her. Sadly, this would be true for the majority of the female population, however not for this woman. She uses her captor's own twisted psychological reasoning to save her life. They battled throughout the entire book: the physically weak female and the muscular, strong male. 

And then the outcome...the ending...the "checkmate."

Brilliance captured in 228 pages.

Links:
Break Her from Amazon.com
Break Her on Goodreads
B. G. Harlen on Goodreads
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind on Amazon.com
Gustave Le Bon on Wikipedia

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